WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Nutcracker 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:06.439 Happy Saturday. The first performance of the ballet The Nutcracker 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:10.280 took place in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on December sixth, eighteen 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.239 ninety two, in the old style calendar that Russia was 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:16.520 still using at the time. That is December eighteenth on 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.240 the Gregorian calendar, which is the calendar we used today. 0:00:19.960 --> 0:00:22.400 We are bringing our episode on the Nutcracker out us 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:25.239 today's Saturday. Classic course, it's one hundred and thirty third 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:29.120 birthday at least approximately if you sort of disregard the 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:34.560 calendar math. This episode originally came out on December thirteenth, 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:41.280 twenty twenty one. Please enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:51.720 in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:56.000 to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:01.560 The Nutcracker. It has become such a huge tradition for 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:04.720 so many people around Christmas. I know, for my own part, 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:07.240 my mom and I went to the North Carolina School 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.479 of the Arts production of The Nutcracker together for many, 0:01:10.520 --> 0:01:13.679 many years. We had a family friend a little older 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:16.840 than me who went from being Clara as a child 0:01:17.120 --> 0:01:21.520 to being asked to come back and be the Sugarplum 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.199 Ferry after she had gone on to continue her dance 0:01:24.280 --> 0:01:27.440 education in New York. For a whole lot of people, 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:31.960 the Nutcracker is the first ballet they ever experience, or 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.839 maybe the only ballet they ever experience, And it's by 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.880 far the biggest show and the biggest source of ticket 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:44.640 revenue for a lot of ballet companies. And even if 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.280 you have never experienced this whole ballet, music from The 0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:52.280 Nutcracker has also become a huge part not just of 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:55.560 the Christmas season, but also beyond it. Like I can 0:01:55.680 --> 0:02:01.040 even remember a commercial from the nineteen eighties that set 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:05.440 a smurfberry crunch jingle to the march from Act one. 0:02:06.880 --> 0:02:09.959 I will maybe sing that in our behind the scenes, Okay, 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:13.440 I will try to remember that. You just said that. 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:19.040 It's a little odd when you think about it, that 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.880 the Nutcracker ballet has become such a phenomenon, particularly in 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:28.440 North America, but it's also spread to other places too, 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:32.440 considering that it is a Russian adaptation of a German 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:36.359 story that was never really a Christmas staple in its 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.480 home country. So that is the story that we are 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.200 going to tell on the show today. The ballet The 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:47.680 Nutcracker is based on the eighteen sixteen story The Nutcracker 0:02:47.680 --> 0:02:51.360 and the Mouse King by Arned Theodore Amadeus Hoffman or 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:55.800 Eta Hoffman. His name at birth was actually urned Theodore Viilhelm, 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:59.280 but he changed Vilhelm to Amadeus out of admiration for 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.919 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Hoffmann was born in seventeen seventy six 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:08.440 in Koenigsburg, Prussia now Kaliningrad, Russia. Although he spent most 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:11.760 of his adult life in what is now Germany, Kauffman 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.440 wore a lot of hats. He trained as a lawyer 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.920 and served as a law officer before turning his attention 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:21.320 to music. He worked as a composer and a music critic. 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:25.040 He was also an artist, a theater director, and a writer, 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:28.359 and his written work included a lot of fairy tales, 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:32.440 including works for children. His fiction tended to be pretty 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.720 haunting and strange, with stories that carried a whole sense 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:39.560 of ambiguity. They blurred the lines or toyed with the 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:44.200 relationships between imagination and reality, and this included his work 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.400 for young readers, even though a lot of children's literature 0:03:47.440 --> 0:03:51.080 at that point tended to focus more on more heavy 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:55.880 handed didactic stories and morality tales. That wasn't the only 0:03:55.920 --> 0:03:59.160 stuff being published, but a lot of it was very, 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.560 very moral. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King is sometimes 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:08.000 described as the first fantasy written specifically for children. The 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:11.960 story contains fourteen short chapters, some of which just stop 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.120 rather than reaching any sort of logical pause in the narrative. 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.400 There is some speculation that it was broken up this 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:21.080 way so that it can be read one chapter per night, 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:24.679 starting on Christmas Eve as the story does, and ending 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:28.480 with Epiphany on January sixth, so parts of the story 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.960 will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Nutcracker Belly. 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.599 The main character is a seven year old girl, although 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.120 her name is Maurice Stalbaum, not Clara Silberhouse, as it 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:41.800 is in a lot of productions of The Nutcracker. She 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:45.000 has a younger brother, Fritz, and an older sister, Louise, 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.240 although Louise does not play a big part in the story. 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:53.000 Their godfather, Drosselmeyer, is both beloved and a little frightening. 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:56.279 He is old and mysterious and wears an eye patch, 0:04:56.760 --> 0:04:59.960 and he arrives on Christmas Eve with gifts for the fan. 0:05:01.279 --> 0:05:04.839 One of those gifts is an ingenious clockwork palace, but 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:09.080 the children, especially Fritz, are quickly bored of it. The 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.840 clockwork figures just do the same thing over and over. 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:16.960 Then Marie finds a nutcracker among the other Christmas gifts. 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:21.200 Basic tools made to crack nuts have existed at least 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:25.560 since the fourteenth century, but carved wooden nutcracker dolls, typically 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:28.880 made to look like soldiers, started to become popular in 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:33.360 seventeenth century Germany. In the story, the nutcracker is meant 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.960 as a gift for everyone, but Marie is particularly taken 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:40.359 with it and deeply upset when her brother breaks it 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:42.520 by forcing it to crack a nut that is much 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:47.000 too big. Marie tries to bind up the nutcracker's injury 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.479 with a ribbon, and Drosselmeyer does a more thorough repair. 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:54.559 Later on that night, Marie puts the nutcracker to bed, 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:57.880 and that's where the name Clara comes in. Clara is 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:02.040 Marie's new doll, and Marie commandeer's Clara's doll bed so 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.800 that the nutcracker will have a comfortable place to recuperate. 0:06:06.440 --> 0:06:09.000 As she is checking on the nutcracker late at night, 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.919 Marie sees the mouse King and his army preparing for 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:16.320 a war against her brother's toy soldiers, who have all 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.359 come alive. The doll Clara saves the Nutcracker when he 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.159 tries to make a foolhardy leap from the top of 0:06:23.200 --> 0:06:26.760 a high shelf to join in the fray. Marie also 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.400 sees Drosselmeyer on top of the Grandfather clock in place 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:33.320 of the owl that is normally there, although he does 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:36.480 not intervene in the fight with the mice. After hitting 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:39.840 the mouse King with her shoe, Marie swoons and later 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:42.440 wakes up in her own bed. So a lot of 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.240 what we have just said follows a lot of the 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.480 action of Act I in most productions of The Nutcracker, 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:52.719 so if you've seen The Nutcrackers, probably pretty familiar. But 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:56.480 then Hoffmann's story. Marie cuts her arm on a piece 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:00.120 of broken glass during this battle, and when Drosselmeyer comes 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:03.720 to visit her during her recovery, he tells her a story, 0:07:04.080 --> 0:07:08.960 one involving a royal clockmaker also named Strosslemyre, and this 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:13.320 story within a story, clockmaker Drosslemyre served a king and 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:17.800 queen who had a beautiful baby daughter Princess Pearlapat. The 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:21.680 Queen was preparing fat to make sausages or puddings, which 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.520 were the King's favorite dish, when Lady mouse Rink, who's 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.160 basically the queen of the mice, asked her for some 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:31.640 of it. The Queen obliged, but then Lady mouse Rank 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:33.400 and her kin ate so much of the fat that 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.080 there was not enough left for the King's puddings. The 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:41.640 king was furious, and Drosselmeyer, the clockmaker, decided to use 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:44.240 his ingenuity to build traps to get rid of all 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:47.960 the mice. Lady mouse Rank, of course, did not appreciate 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:50.000 that so many of her kin were killed in the 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:54.200 royal family's new mouse traps, so she cursed Princess Perlipat 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:59.240 with ugliness. After consulting with the royal astrologer, Drossalmeyer determined 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:02.800 that Princess Pearl could only be cured with a supernaturally 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:06.520 hard krakatuc nut cracked open and presented to her by 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:09.920 a young man who had never been shaved and never 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:15.480 worn boots. After years and years of searching, Drosselmeyer finally 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.960 found a krakatuck nut in possession of his brother in 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:24.280 Nuremberg and his brother's son, so his nephew turned out 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:27.920 to have never been shaved and never worn boots. Uncle 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.800 and nephew returned to the palace with the nut, where 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:34.320 a long line of potential suitors lined up to try 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:38.120 to bite it open. All of them failed until the 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.800 younger Drosselmeyer that nephew, the last in line, succeeded, But 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:46.360 the young Drosselmeier and Princess Perlipat did not live happily 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.960 ever after. Just after breaking the curse on the princess, 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:55.200 the clockmaker's nephew accidentally stepped on Lady Moushrink, killing her. 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.800 With her dying breath. Lady Mousehrink cursed him, transforming him 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:05.239 in to a nutcracker. Princess Pearlapat, horrified, banished the nutcracker 0:09:05.280 --> 0:09:09.000 and his uncle, the clockmaker. The Royal Astronomer, who was 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.319 also exiled for his role in all of this, predicted 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:15.640 that the Nutcracker's curse would be lifted only if someone 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:19.120 fell in love with him. Of course, at this point, Marie, 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.880 hearing this story, concludes that it is real that her 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:28.040 beloved Nutcracker toy is really the transmogrified nephew of the 0:09:28.160 --> 0:09:32.400 Royal Clockmaker, and that royal clockmaker is none other than 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:37.760 her godfather Drossalmyer. Marie demands to know why Drosselemire is 0:09:37.800 --> 0:09:40.880 not helping his nephew, after all, she saw him right 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.600 there on the clock on the night that the Nutcracker 0:09:43.679 --> 0:09:47.439 fought the mouse King. Once Marie has deduced what's going on, 0:09:47.880 --> 0:09:51.480 the mouse King starts demanding tribute, eating his way through 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:55.120 all her treats and toys. Then one day she notices 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:58.160 that the Nutcracker has a spot of blood on his neck. 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:01.520 As she's cleaning it off, he asks for a sword. 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.040 She gives it to him, and he is finally victorious 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.080 in his fight against the mouse King, cutting off the 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.719 mouse king seven heads and presenting Marie with seven little crowns. 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.400 The Nutcracker takes Marie to a magical kingdom with meadows 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:21.000 made of candy, a lemonade river, and towns made of 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:26.040 gingerbread and bonbonds. She soon learns that the Nutcracker is 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:30.840 the Prince of Comfeturemborg, or the Kingdom of Sweets. Marie 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.120 once again wakes up in her own bed, and when 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:35.800 she tries to tell her family what has happened. They 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:41.240 are dismissive, but soon her godfather, Drosselmeyer's young nephew arrives 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:45.120 from Nuremberg. The nephew thanks Marie for saving him, and 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:48.920 he proposes. A year and a day later, Marie and 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.480 the younger Drosselmeyer Mary and from there reign as King 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:56.800 and Queen of the Kingdom of Sweets. This whole story 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:00.800 is twisting and layered. It folds back on itself at 0:11:00.840 --> 0:11:05.439 various points. Marie often tells her parents what she's experienced 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:09.000 and seen, only for them to blame her fevered mind 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:13.040 and order her to stop telling such wild tales. As 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:17.040 her godfather Drosselmeyer tells her this story, he also suggests 0:11:17.120 --> 0:11:19.760 that it's real, but then when he talks to her parents, 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:24.600 he dismisses what she's saying as fancy. As one example, 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.400 he tells her parents that the mouse King's seven crowns 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.400 are a gift that he gave her years before, certainly 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:35.880 not something belonging to a seven headed mouse king. Gaslighting. 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.760 The book's tone is fairly ominous, actually, and it draws 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:43.960 heavily from German romanticism. The brothers grim and they're dark 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:47.440 and sometimes gruesome. Collections of fairy tales date from around 0:11:47.440 --> 0:11:51.839 this same time. Past podcast subject Casper David Friedrich was 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:55.800 another of Hoffman's contemporaries, and many of his landscapes have 0:11:55.920 --> 0:12:00.680 a similarly eerie and foreboding, although still very beautif full feel. 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:05.160 But in eighteen forty four, more than twenty years after 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:10.840 Eta Hoffman's death, past podcast subject Alexandra dum Peir adapted 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.800 The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and translated it into French. 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.240 The resulting book had the same basic plot and the 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:20.000 same sort of story within a story, but with a 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:23.120 tone that was generally a lot lighter and more cheerful 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:25.720 than the original. And it is this version that was 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:29.400 adapted into a ballet, or at least part of it was. 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:32.640 We're going to talk more about that after a sponsor break. 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:46.160 Pyotr Ilyitchchaikovsky was born in Russia in eighteen forty and 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.000 he started composing music by the age of four and 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:52.880 taking piano lessons at five. But Russia didn't have a 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:56.600 formal system of education for musicians and composers yet, so 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.120 it did not occur to his parents at first that 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.160 this could be a care for him, so they focused 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:04.520 his education on the idea that he would become a 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:08.439 civil servant that eventually changed, though. He became one of 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.200 the first students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory after it 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.920 was established in eighteen sixty two, and he eventually became 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:20.320 famous both within and outside of Russia, composing seven symphonies, 0:13:20.640 --> 0:13:26.320 eleven operas and various concertos, cantatas, quartets, choral works, and 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:31.400 three ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker. 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:34.200 And The Nutcracker Ballet was part of a two part 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:38.480 commission from Russia's Imperial Theaters in Saint Petersburg, the other 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:41.920 part being a one act opera. The ballet was his 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:46.400 second collaboration to include both Imperial Theaters director Ivan Vasevlovski 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:51.320 and French choreographer Marius Petipa, chief choreographer of the Imperial Ballet. 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:55.200 The three men had previously worked together on The Sleeping Beauty, 0:13:55.280 --> 0:13:58.960 with Zevlovski commissioning the work, writing the libretto and being 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:02.240 heavily involved in the costume and set design, and Peteba 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:07.080 choreographing the ballet and providing detailed instructions to Chukowski on 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.760 the music. The Sleeping Beauty had been a success after 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:14.800 opening at the Marinski Theater in Saint Petersburg in eighteen ninety, 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:19.400 and Vesblovsky was hoping for something similar to happen with 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:23.120 The Nutcracker. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King had become 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.640 a well known and widely read children's story, and he 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:31.120 chose Alexander Duma's adaptation of it as the ballet's starting point. 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:35.640 Even though classical ballet does not typically include spoken language 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:39.120 or narration, by the nineteenth century, the process of creating 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:42.360 a ballet generally started still with a libretto, a written 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.120 narrative laying out the story that the ballet would tell. 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:50.800 The composer, choreographer, set designer, and costume designer. Basically everyone 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.840 who worked on creating the ballet would rely on this 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:58.080 libretto to translate the story for the stage. The Nutcracker's 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:02.720 libretto is generally credited to both Zevalewski and Petipa, although 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:05.960 it was not entirely clear who did what in preparing it. 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.760 But the Nutcracker collaboration among these men did not seem 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:12.640 to have gone as well as it did with The 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:18.920 Sleeping Beauty. With both ballets, Petipa provided Chikovsky with detailed 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.240 instructions about the type of music that was needed, as 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.560 in the full ballet was broken down into its scenes 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:30.800 and dances and variations, with Petipah giving very precise instructions 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.880 about how many measures of what kind of music was 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.800 needed for each of them. It reads almost like a 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:41.400 shopping list. But in The Sleeping Beauty these notes and 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:44.320 the libretto they had added up to a story that 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:48.920 had deeper themes, which Daikovsky could explore through musical devices 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.160 like lip botifs. These represented aspects of the story while 0:15:53.200 --> 0:15:57.120 also unifying the ballet. In addition to the story of 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:00.440 Princess Aurora, The Sleeping Beauty also dealt with themes of 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.560 good versus evil, and Tchaikowsky could just explore all of 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.600 this and represent it through music. Meanwhile, the libretto for 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:12.400 The Nutcracker had abandoned the deeper themes and ambiguities of 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:16.640 Hoffmann's story. The entire middle portion of The Nutcracker and 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:20.160 the Mouse King had been cut almost entirely, leaving only 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.560 the Christmas party, Drosalmeyer bringing gifts, the battle between the 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:26.880 Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and the voyage to the 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:31.440 Kingdom of Sweets after a grand final walt The Nutcracker 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:34.520 was to end with an apotheosis with a bee hive 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:38.960 surrounded by bees. The main character, now named Clara, did 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:42.000 not return home after her travels through the Kingdom of Sweets, 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:44.960 so it really wasn't even clear what the point of 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:49.880 it all was. On top of his creative dissatisfaction, Tchikowsky 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:54.360 experienced depression and anxiety throughout his life, along with social 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:57.680 pressures and taboos stemming from his attraction to other men 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:00.880 at a time when homosexuality was both ill legal and 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.600 deeply stigmatized, and all of this may have fed into 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.880 his struggle to get started on The Nutcracker. In April 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.440 of eighteen ninety one, he wrote to Zevlovsky about it, saying, 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.920 quote here in Ruon, I had to call on extraordinary 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.720 willpower to make an agonizing effort in order to work. 0:17:21.320 --> 0:17:25.400 As a result, what comes out is colorless, dry, hasty, 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:29.320 and wretched. The awareness that things are not going well 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:33.359 torments me and agonizes me to the point of sickness. 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:38.000 A consuming depression constantly gnaws at my heart, and I 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:42.000 have not for a long time felt as unhappy as now. 0:17:42.680 --> 0:17:46.280 The day after Tchikovsky wrote this letter, he learned by 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:50.159 reading it in a newspaper that his sister Alexandra had died. 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.000 He was, at that moment on the way to board 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.480 a ship for a tour of the United States, where 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:59.080 he would, among other things, conduct music he had composed 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.639 at the grand open of Carnegie Hall. This would have 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:07.320 been terrible in any circumstance, but this was particularly terrible timing. 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.800 But Tchikowski did not cancel his tour or his appearances 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:13.919 in the United States. Instead, it seems as though he 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.560 took this transatlantic voyage as a time to contemplate and 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:22.159 to refocus. Music. Historians and theorists have noted that The 0:18:22.280 --> 0:18:27.640 Nutcracker incorporates more borrowed folk melodies and existing musical themes 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:30.760 than most of his other work does, kind of suggesting 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:33.879 that once he did finally get under way, he still 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.639 had trouble feeling creative. There's also some suggestion that the 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:40.879 character of the Sugarplum Theory is meant to embody his 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:43.880 late sister. He was known to the family as Sasha 0:18:44.480 --> 0:18:47.399 Dchaikowski may not have been the only person who was 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:51.639 facing very real creative trouble with the Nutcracker. Although Marius 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:54.520 Petipah had been the one to write Chaikovsky's instructions for 0:18:54.560 --> 0:18:58.360 the music and initial notations for the choreography, he did 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:02.280 not choreograph most of the ballots. He became ill shortly 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:04.479 after that work began, and he left most of it 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:09.480 to his assistant Lev Ivanov. According to Petipa's memoirs, Ivanov 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:13.720 did all the staging and choreographed all the dances. Pettipa 0:19:13.880 --> 0:19:16.119 was seventy three when this happened, but there is some 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:19.760 speculation that he really wasn't all that sick and he 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.639 just kind of didn't want to work on this nonsensical show. 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:27.800 Ivanov worked from Petipa's notes, but he didn't always follow them. 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.399 For example, in Act two, Petipah called for quote Treypak 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.040 for the end of the dance turning on the floor. 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:38.760 Trey Pak is a folk dance from Ukraine and Russia, 0:19:39.000 --> 0:19:42.800 but Ivanov took this piece in a totally different direction, 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:49.200 using hoops and lead dancer Alexander Shuriev choreographed his part himself. 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:52.760 This is why in some productions of The Nutcracker day 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:56.720 Treypak is this intensely athletic dance full of leaping and squatting, 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:58.920 and dancers that are dressed as like peasants or maybe 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:03.119 cossacks will and others they are in candy stripes and 0:20:03.240 --> 0:20:05.760 dancing with hoops. If you've only seen the first version, 0:20:06.040 --> 0:20:11.160 the first time you've seen the second one, you might 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:16.560 feel like it was a rip off. Yeah. Jakowski compiled 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:19.919 a Nutcracker suite featuring selections from the ballet, which was 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.040 first performed in March of eighteen ninety two, and the 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.719 full ballet premiered at the Mariinski Theater in Saint Petersburg, Russia, 0:20:26.760 --> 0:20:30.440 on December eighteenth of that year or December sixth under 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:35.359 the old style calendar. It followed Chaikovski's one act opera Yolanta, 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:37.960 which had also been the other part of this commission. 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.080 One of the criticisms of Daikowsky's work during his lifetime 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.439 was that it was not Russian enough. But The Nutcracker 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.720 includes several elements that are really hallmarks of this period 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.960 of Russian theater and ballet. This is really considered to 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:56.800 be Russian ballet's golden age. Czar Alexander the third was 0:20:56.840 --> 0:20:59.320 a patron of the arts in the theater and a 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:01.840 lot of the work it was created during his reign 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:06.520 involved dramatic sets and costumes and the sorts of spectacles 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:10.160 that the czar generally enjoyed. Much of the second act 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:14.040 of The Nutcracker is also essentially a court celebration, with 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.840 Clara as a guest to the Kingdom of sweets being 0:21:16.920 --> 0:21:19.840 presented with a pageant of all of the Kingdom's best 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:23.640 and brightest, and some of this court review highlights Russia 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:28.440 in its presentation, especially the series of Spanish, Chinese, Arabian 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:32.639 and Russian dances also known as Chocolate Tea Coffee Tripak. 0:21:33.320 --> 0:21:37.560 Especially in Petipa's original notations, Trippak was to be the showstopper, 0:21:37.960 --> 0:21:42.360 suggesting that Russia was the best among nations. These dances 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:45.199 combine with others in Act two to suggest the idea 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:49.280 of many nations living together harmoniously under the rule of 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:53.320 one benevolent monarch, that is the Sugarplum Fairy, along with 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.080 her prints. A twenty sixteen article in the journal Dance 0:21:57.200 --> 0:22:01.119 Research by Damien Maye also explores the idea that the 0:22:01.240 --> 0:22:04.600 use of French songs and costumes inspired by fashion of 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:08.639 the French Revolutionary era allude to the alliance between France 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:12.639 and Russia that developed in the eighteen nineties, and Tzar 0:22:12.720 --> 0:22:15.920 Alexander the third does seem to have liked this ballet. 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:19.119 Djaikowsky wrote a letter to his brother saying that the 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.280 Czar quote was delighted and sent for me to his 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:26.439 box and said a whole lot of kind words. I 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:28.679 love that, a whole lot of kind words. It's just 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:32.800 a great turn of phrase. But as for everybody else, 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.280 reviews a little bit mixed, and the bad reviews were 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:41.280 often explicitly and pointedly bad. People pointed out the same 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:44.760 aspects of the libretto that had caused Chaikowsky so much frustration, 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.320 including the fact that Act one and Act two almost 0:22:48.480 --> 0:22:51.560 felt like two totally different ballets, neither of which made 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:54.800 a whole lot of sense. Some critics insisted that Act 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:57.879 one was barely a ballet at all. People mostly stood 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:02.240 around and pantomimed the words of one critic quote. First 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:05.360 of all, the Nutcracker can under no condition be called 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:08.600 a ballet. It does not satisfy even one of the 0:23:08.600 --> 0:23:12.400 demands of a ballet. Ballet, as a basic genre of art, 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:16.600 is mimed drama, and consequently must contain all the elements 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:19.840 of norm drama. On the other hand, there must be 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.840 a place in ballet for plastic attitudes and dances made 0:23:23.920 --> 0:23:27.399 up of the entire essence of classical choreography. There is 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:30.560 nothing of this in The Nutcracker. There is not even 0:23:30.640 --> 0:23:34.360 a subject. And also the stage was full of children. 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:38.280 At this point in Russian ballet history, younger ballet students 0:23:38.359 --> 0:23:41.639 did not usually share the stage with older teens and adults. 0:23:42.320 --> 0:23:45.119 Reviewers bemoaned the fact that this ballet seemed to have 0:23:45.160 --> 0:23:48.840 been made by children for children. To add to that, 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:51.679 many of the boys in it were not dance students 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:54.800 at all. They had been recruited from a military academy. 0:23:55.560 --> 0:23:58.680 The focus on children in the ballets first act also 0:23:58.840 --> 0:24:02.399 meant that the most riching balletic performances done by the 0:24:02.400 --> 0:24:07.000 company's most prominent dancers didn't happen until very late in 0:24:07.040 --> 0:24:11.200 the evening in act too, and because the Nutcracker followed 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:14.040 this other one act opera, that meant that they got 0:24:14.080 --> 0:24:17.560 on stage very very late. People felt like they had 0:24:17.600 --> 0:24:20.119 watched a whole opera and then a bunch of kids 0:24:20.200 --> 0:24:23.520 running around for an hour before the real ballet even started. 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:27.800 And then that ballet was over with no real resolution. Overall, 0:24:27.840 --> 0:24:31.800 though Tchaikowski's score was praised, although sometimes that praise was 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:35.560 a little bit backhanded, as in quote in some it's 0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:38.359 a pity that so much good music is expended on 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:42.439 such nonsense, so unworthy of attention, But the music in 0:24:42.520 --> 0:24:47.320 general is excellent. Dchaikowski clearly had huge trouble getting started 0:24:47.359 --> 0:24:50.120 and found the early work on the ballet incredibly difficult, 0:24:50.520 --> 0:24:52.639 but it does seem that he was pleased enough with 0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:55.760 the score once he was actually done with it. One 0:24:55.760 --> 0:24:58.119 thing to note here is that we don't actually have 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:03.639 the choreography from the nutcra debut performances. Petipi's instructions to 0:25:03.720 --> 0:25:07.080 Chaikovsky have survived, along with his notes and the libretto, 0:25:07.160 --> 0:25:11.639 but the oldest surviving set of more complete, comprehensive notes 0:25:12.160 --> 0:25:14.520 was not written down until a few years later, so 0:25:14.640 --> 0:25:17.639 it's not really clear whether any of the criticisms of 0:25:17.680 --> 0:25:21.879 the dancing itself led the choreography to evolve over the 0:25:22.000 --> 0:25:25.520 Marinski Theaters eighteen ninety two to ninety three ballet season 0:25:26.240 --> 0:25:29.080 once that season was over, though it does not appear 0:25:29.160 --> 0:25:32.439 that major changes were made to the Nutcracker until after 0:25:32.480 --> 0:25:36.560